United States v. Ibarra

In United States v. Ibarra, No. 24-20071 (5th Cir. Dec. 16, 2024) (unpublished), the Fifth Circuit vacated the defendant’s 105-month prison sentence because the district court had imposed that sentence after relying on clearly erroneous facts.

Background: Ibarra pled guilty to two drug charges, and his PSR calculated a Sentencing Guidelines range of 108 to 135 months’ imprisonment. The PSR also described the relevant facts this way:

[A]n undercover officer (“UCO”) contacted an individual called “Silverado” to initiate the purchase of five kilograms of methamphetamine. Silverado agreed to the sale and had the UCO contact Ibarra to arrange the transaction. Loya-Tafolla drove the vehicle that arrived to meet the UCO. Ibarra sat in the front passenger seat. Law enforcement officers recovered 4.375 kilograms of actual methamphetamine. Loya-Tafolla and Ibarra were involved in coordinating the transaction with the UCO, and the PSR deemed both men to be average participants in the offenses.

Neither Ibarra nor the Government objected to the PSR. At sentencing, the district court imposed a sentence slightly below the Guidelines—105 months’ imprisonment. It denied Ibarra’s request for a 72-month sentence because it said he had “destroyed the lives of unnamed victims and manufactured controlled substances.”

Legal Standard: “Regardless of whether the sentence imposed is inside or outside the Guidelines range,” a district court commits a significant procedural sentencing error by “selecting a sentence based on clearly erroneous facts.” Gall v. United States, 552 U.S. 38, 51 (2007).

Holding: The district court impermissibly relied on an incorrect view of the facts, which necessitated that Ibarra receive a new sentencing hearing.

First, the district court said that Ibarra had “destroyed the lives of unnamed victims,” but the PSR identified no victims and the Government did not object to that statement. Here, Ibarra possessed drugs that were seized by the police who arrested him, so there was no evidence that his crime destroyed the lives of any “unnamed victims.”

Second, the district court said that Ibarra had manufactured drugs, but neither the indictment nor the PSR even mentioned drug manufacturing. On appeal, the Government argued that Ibarra should be held responsible for the foreseeable acts of his co-conspirators, and his codefendant was a “a suspected member of an established drug trafficking organization in Mexico, where the methamphetamine originated.” From there, the Government deemed it “more than plausible” that the district court had treated Ibarra’s association with the drug organization as involvement in the manufacture of drugs.

The court rejected that argument because the only evidence called Ibarra’s codefendant a suspected member of a drug organization, and no evidence suggested that Ibarra was involved in any drug transactions other than the one involved in this case.

Result: Even though Ibarra received a below-Guidelines sentence, the Fifth Circuit vacated the sentence and remanded the case for a resentencing hearing. The Fifth Circuit noted that it has frequently vacated sentences when the district court “appeared to rely, to a considerable extent, on . . . mistaken facts, and when the incorrect fact was the primary fact mentioned by the district court as a reason for the sentence” (internal quotation marks and citation omitted). Here, the court followed that pattern and remanded for the district court to reassess its sentence “with a correct understanding of the record.”